A probabilistic approach to the geometry of the \ell_p^n-ball

For $2 < p < p_0 \simeq 26.265$, the hyperplane section of the $l_p^n$-unit ball $B_p^n$ perpendicular to a^(n) = 1/sqrt(n) (1, ... ,1) for large $n$ has larger volume than the one orthogonal to a^(2) = 1/sqrt(2) (1,1,0, ...,0), as shown by Oleszkiewicz. This is different from the case of $l_\infty^n$ considered by Ball. We give a quantitative estimate for which dimensions $n$ this happens, namely for $n > c (\frac 1 {p_0-p} + \frac 1 {p-2})$ for some absolute constant $c>0$....

In this paper we prove that for any $p\in[2,\infty)$ the $\ell_p^n$ unit ball, $B_p^n$, satisfies the square negative correlation property with respect to every orthonormal basis, while we show it is not always the case for $1\le p\le 2$. In order to do that we regard $B_p^n$ as the orthogonal projection of $B_p^{n+1}$ onto the hyperplane $e_{n+1}^\perp$. We will also study the orthogonal projection of $B_p^n$ onto the hyperplane orthogonal to the diagonal vector $(1,\dots,1)...

We show that for any $1\leq p\leq\infty$, the family of random vectors uniformly distributed on hyperplane projections of the unit ball of $\ell_p^n$ verify the variance conjecture $$ \textrm{Var}\,|X|^2\leq C\max_{\xi\in S^{n-1}}\mathbb{E}\langle X,\xi\rangle^2\mathbb{E}|X|^2, $$ where $C$ depends on $p$ but not on the dimension $n$ or the hyperplane. We will also show a general result relating the variance conjecture for a random vector uniformly distributed on an isotropic...

Let $n$ be a sufficiently large natural number and let $B$ be an origin-symmetric convex body in $R^n$ in the $\ell$-position, and such that the normed space $(R^n,\|\cdot\|_B)$ admits a $1$-unconditional basis. Then for any $\varepsilon\in(0,1/2]$, and for random $c\varepsilon\log n/\log\frac{1}{\varepsilon}$-dimensional subspace $E$ distributed according to the rotation-invariant (Haar) measure, the section $B\cap E$ is $(1+\varepsilon)$-Euclidean with probability close to ...

Uniform probability distributions on $\ell_p$ balls and spheres have been studied extensively and are known to behave like product measures in high dimensions. In this note we consider the uniform distribution on the intersection of a simplex and a sphere. Certain new and interesting features, such as phase transitions and localization phenomena emerge.

Ball's celebrated cube slicing (1986) asserts that among hyperplane sections of the cube in $\mathbb{R}^n$, the central section orthogonal to $(1,1,0,\dots,0)$ has the greatest volume. We show that the same continues to hold for slicing $\ell_p$ balls when $p > 10^{15}$, as well as that the same hyperplane minimizes the volume of projections of $\ell_q$ balls for $1 < q < 1 + 10^{-12}$. This extends Szarek's optimal Khinchin inequality (1976) which corresponds to $q=1$. These...

Let $n$ be a large integer, and let $G$ be the standard Gaussian vector in $R^n$. Paouris, Valettas and Zinn (2015) showed that for all $p\in[1,c\log n]$, the variance of the $\ell_p^n$--norm of $G$ is equivalent, up to a constant multiple, to $\frac{2^p}{p}n^{2/p-1}$, and for $p\in[C\log n,\infty]$, $\mathbb{Var}\|G\|_p\simeq (\log n)^{-1}$. Here, $C,c>0$ are universal constants. That result left open the question of estimating the variance for $p$ logarithmic in $n$. In thi...

Accurate estimation of tail probabilities of projections of high-dimensional probability measures is of relevance in high-dimensional statistics and asymptotic geometric analysis. Whereas large deviation principles identify the asymptotic exponential decay rate of probabilities, sharp large deviation estimates also provide the "prefactor" in front of the exponentially decaying term. For fixed $p \in (1,\infty)$, consider independent sequences $(X^{(n,p)})_{n \in \mathbb{N}}$ ...

We prove a limit theorem for the the maximal interpoint distance (also called the diameter) for a sample of n i.i.d. points in the unit ball of dimension 2 or more. The exact form of the limit distribution and the required normalisation are derived using assumptions on the tail of the interpoint distance for two i.i.d. points. The results are specialised for the cases when the points have spherical symmetric distributions, in particular, are uniformly distributed in the whole...

In this work we study a class of random convex sets that "interpolate" between polytopes and zonotopes. These sets arise from considering a $q^{th}$-moment ($q\geq 1$) of an average of order statistics of $1$-dimensional marginals of a sequence of $N\geq n$ independent random vectors in $\mathbb R^n$. We consider the random model of isotropic log-concave distributions as well as the uniform distribution on an $\ell_p^n$-sphere ($1\leq p < \infty$) with respect to the cone pro...